Swimming Ignorant Fire Creates a Warm Sense of Nostalgia in the Sepia Toned Ambient Sounds of “Up Yonder”

When the pedal steel bends its streaming tones into an infinite horizon in Swimming Ignorant Fire’s “Up Yonder” it seems entirely appropriate to the title. The informal melodic lines sit in the sound of a found piano gospel tape look. The net effect that of a sepia toned film with the opacity of images switching back and forth and layered on top of one another in a seamless flow of transition with the loop taking us to the end with the pedal steel in the deep background. It’s a sustained sense of wonder and mystery at what the original context of the artifact of the tape loop might be while appreciating how the exploratory performance of pedal steel seemingly draws that piano from some ambient source of collective memory impressed upon the landscape by the psychic energies of the people that lived nearby or impressed into the original spools of magnetic tape some of their own appreciation of the moment captured minus the direct human interpretive input. It’s like a strange, offbeat, alternative science fiction story in musical form and soothing in its idiosyncratic evocation of a nostalgia for something you’ve never experienced. Listen to “Up Yonder” on Spotify and follow Swim Ignorant Fire at the links below. The album Glow released on November 3, 2023 and can be accessed at the streaming links provided.